The Times, They Are A-Changin'

Change is an interesting concept. While it’s a natural part of life, some people resist it as hard as they can, while others embrace it and look for areas they can change all the time. Personally I don’t particularly care for big changes, even though I know that they’re necessary.  Somehow though, the entirety of 2012 has been a season of change…

I think it all began in late 2011. I was beginning to grow irritated with apartment life. I got new upstairs neighbors who either ripped up the carpet or wore cement shoes because it was non-stop pounding. I began to feel confined in my space and never really felt at home. So I decided that I was in a good enough place in my career that I decided to start looking for a house. I wanted something simple, most likely a three bedroom/two bathroom home….one that would be easy to sell when the time came. I found a realtor and outlined what I was looking for and what I could afford. 

Since it was getting close to Christmas I decided to wait until after the new year to start looking. I went home and had a great Christmas (as most of them usually are), and came back and started looking at houses. Most of the ones I looked at weren’t great, they were either in pretty bad shape or a bit further out than I wanted to be. I did find one that I really liked and decided to come look at it a little bit later on when mom and dad could give me their opinion. Unfortunately that entire situation was not to be, and something even worse occurred in the meantime.

Mom and dad’s dog Dude started getting sick and lethargic. They took him to the vet fearing the worst, and it ended up being so. Dude had cancer and was given a very short time. During the next few weeks he had full reign of the house. All of his toys were laid out, he ate all the foods that he liked (he ate people food as well as dog food), and went on several “adventures” as mom called them. He went to the beach and came to visit me with mom and dad to look at the house. The whole time he was fairly energetic, but you could tell he was sick and he knew it. Before mom and dad left, I sat on the floor, picked him up and rocked him. I didn’t know for sure, but I also pretty much knew that it would be the last time I would ever see him. I sat there rocking him for a good seven or eight minutes and cried the whole time. A few weeks later he took a turn for the worse, and they decided that the minute he started showing signs of being in pain that they would put him down, so they had no choice but to do it then. A few weeks later I went home to visit and they showed me where he was buried along with his two favorite toys and a few more treats that he liked. Before he was cremated, the vet’s office took his paw prints and put them on a card and put his birth and death dates on there and mailed it home a few days afterwards. A lot of people don’t understand how you can be so upset when a pet passes, and if you don’t have one, you cannot understand how much they become a part of your lives….and how empty it feels when they aren’t there anymore.

Dude, last Christmas

After looking at the house again and deciding it was the best I had seen, I decided to make an offer. Unfortunately right after I decided to make an offer someone else had made one that was accepted. So I lost out on it and had to go back to square one. In the meantime, there were interesting developments at work. The person responsible for the Career Portal (which I am the backup) left, and shortly thereafter the woman responsible for Compliance Training (which I am the backup as well) also left. Suddenly I was thrice as busy as I was before! Fortunately we brought in some backup and things are a lot more even. It was a bittersweet time since the Compliance lady was one of the people who interviewed me via phone some five and a half years ago. 

January was a generally mild month along with the rest of the 2011/2012 winter. One Sunday at a leader’s meeting we began to discuss the future of our church and where we would be going. Being a small college/post-college age congregation presented a fair share of financial challenges, and things were finally coming to a head. We discussed merging with another church or moving to a rental space that was cheaper than that building we were renting at the time but nothing was decided. The merger with another church was less than ideal because it didn’t seem like a merger. Working for a company whose main objective is to acquire other companies, I know what an acquisition looks like, and that’s what this was. We decided we didn’t want to do that and would discuss other options the next month. When the next month came we were all a little blindsided. Our pastor (who is in Seminary school, working three jobs to support a wife and house) had been offered a music pastor job at a church in town, and had no choice but to take it. The problem with that was it left us with no other choice but to close. The first church that felt like home to me was closing down. We had a huge last service that was mostly music requested by the members (I requested the first song I had ever heard at the church, as a somewhat symbolic bookend for myself), and had time for people to share what Central had meant to them. It was a pretty emotional time and I told everyone there that to me, even though the doors will lock and the signs will be taken down, Central Community Church will never close for good. All of my friends came from there and without them and the church I would have left here a long time ago. But through them and the church body I developed a second core group of friends and because of that the church cannot close for me. The times and places may be changing, but the idea remains the same.

Just after the last Service

One Wednesday in March my realtor emailed me a listing that had hit the market that day. She said she thought it was a good match and that we should look at it the next day….which struck me as odd because we always went on Saturday mornings. I figured she was really excited about this house so I decided to go. We looked around and I immediately liked it. All the things that we had found wrong with other houses were not present here. No steep hill on the driveway, no tiny master bathroom, no smoke smell or crack-house feel, and most importantly, it was in the area that I was really after. We even looked for things wrong and couldn’t find anything glaring. I decided that I needed to think about it, and wanted to come back with a friend. Two days later I was back at the house with my friend Spence, who had bought a house a while back and knew what to look for….we looked it over again and found no big problems, and I liked it just as much if not more the second time. I told my realtor then that I wanted to make an offer. She told me that was a good idea since there was an offer made early that morning, one pending, and four scheduled showings the next day! We went by her office, filled out what seemed like a mountain of paperwork, and submitted an offer. The other realtor said we would have an answer by the end of the day. Later that night I got a call from my realtor, who told me in a deceivingly calm voice that they had accepted my offer. I was ecstatic, and gathered friends to go out and celebrate. 

After that the next two weeks were a bit of a whirlwind…getting all my financing together, getting the house inspected, gathering boxes and starting to pack and clean out what I didn’t need, getting insurance set up….it was a complete blur. It’s truly a miracle that I didn’t forget something critical. Everything happened so fast at the beginning and then once the escrow period was over there was nothing to do but pack, which took me about a week. Once I was done packing the non-critical stuff, there was about 3 weeks before closing….the longest three weeks I’ve had in a long time. I went from “rush, rush, rush” to having to wait….and wait…..and wait. Finally the time came for closing, and although it was delayed, it was only by a few hours. Closing was scheduled for a Friday and I had to be out of my apartment on Monday, plus I had to paint and move so delaying it more than a few hours was not an option!

After painting the pink room, master bed, master bath and second bedroom, it was moving day. After we had everything loaded up on the second trip (I had enough trucks and people that it only took me two trips!), I stood in the middle of my now-empty apartment. It seemed so big. I looked around and was taken back to the day I moved in, which was the last time I saw it so empty. I thought about where I was then and where I am now, and started to tear up a little bit. The reality of what was happening started to hit pretty hard. Was I making the right decision? This was where I had the best and worst times in the past five years. It was a part of me. Standing there it all came back pretty hard. It reminded me of the end of the show “Scrubs” where JD is leaving and after reminiscing over his years at the hospital he says “and even though it felt warm and safe, I knew it had to end”. I walked out the door and locked it for the last time and went “home.” That word now had an entirely new meaning.

After finally getting everything settled, all the furniture moved and arranged and getting my services set up (including DirecTV, which means I can FINALLY watch Orioles games for the first time since 2003), I had my friends over for a cookout and someone mentioned that my back yard is perfect for a dog since it’s fenced in.  I had thought about that too and started looking for what kind of dog I wanted. My number one criteria were that the dog not be one that sheds all over the place. I love dogs, but I hate dog hair all over the place more than just about anything. I came across a breed called a Border Terrier. Small but not tiny, the calmest and most even tempered of the terrier breed, great for families and other dogs, and has hair instead of fur. Well I embarked on trying to find one, but that was no easy task. I really preferred to adopt instead of buy one, but they aren’t that common around here. If I lived in England or Scotland I could walk out on the street and find one. Since they are so hard to find I continued to look on Petfinder and other adoption sites but had no luck, so I abandoned my search for the time being.

Speaking of change, getting older is probably the most relentless change that will happen to you, and this summer I crossed a milestone. The big three-oh. Thirty. When the hell did this happen? I guess it fits, I mean I have a house, a mortgage, I own my car completely, and have a career. I remember something the comedian Sinbad said: “When you turn 30 your body changes. If something breaks, it don’t heal like it used you, you just have to learn how to walk differently!” And to that extent, I decided to go in the opposite direction of that notion that you have to slow down as you get older. I started learning piano again, started exercising more, and perhaps the craziest thing I’ve done in a while is that I started taking ice skating lessons  (which btw, if you ever take classes to learn to skate, get your knees and quads ready, they’re going to take a beating). Hopefully next fall I’ll be skilled enough to play in a D-League team.

One Monday afternoon I left work a little early to go get the oil changed in my car. The place was pretty empty and I decided to just wait since it wouldn’t take too long. I remembered that someone had told me that craigslist was a good place to look for pets, so I found a craigslist app for my phone and started looking. I did a search for “Border” and was flooded with Border Collies that were listed. Figuring that it was not going to happen I still scrolled and there was a listing posted three hours previous. A two year old Border Terrier in Charlotte. I read the description and found out that his owner was relocating to Costa Rica and couldn’t take him with her. I immediately emailed her and asked about him (but it was a rather sloppy email….I was just putting a feeler out there really), and by the next day I had no response. I wondered if it was because I didn’t really tell anything about myself in the email. So I sent another email to the user from a different email account, saying that a Border was exactly what I was looking for and that I had a big fenced in back yard and friends with dogs so he’d have playmates and all that. Two hours later she responded that he was available, and the next thing you know my friend Aaron and I were on our way to Charlotte to pick up a dog! We met the owner in a park not far from where she lived and she explained that she had a home lined up for him, but it fell through and her only option was to give him up. I felt bad for her, but at the same time I knew that it was better than sending him to the pound. We loaded up his crate, his bed, all of his toys and we were off back home with Spiff (named after Spiff the Spaceman from Calvin and Hobbes….but since I didn’t really read C&H that much, I decided to rename him Link after the Legend of Zelda character. Geeky I know, and I don’t care). 

Link!

So here I am in early October, 2012. Last year this time I hadn’t even thought about a house or a dog or anything like that. People change over the years, which is inevitable…but for me it seems like a lot has changed in the course of one year. I’m curious to see where I’ll be in October of 2013….assuming the Mayans were wrong, of course. Looking back really the only thing that I can think of to sum it up and to give “advice” as it were comes from the song the post is named after.

Come gather ‘round people, wherever you roam,
And admit that the waters around you have grown.
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’,
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.